Vehicles have a variety of openings to allow passengers or cargo to enter and exit the vehicle, and/or to allow ventilation and light into a passenger cabin. Such openings are sometimes covered by a closure that can be controlled using a motor or by mechanical action by the passenger. For example, the panels that cover an opening in the roof of the vehicle are usually called sunroofs or moonroofs. The combination where a movable transparent panel in the roof is positioned adjacent a non-moveable transparent panel is sometimes referred to as a panoramic sunroof.
Traditionally, vehicle roof closures have been based on having parallel tracks in the roof. FIG. 1 shows a prior art sunroof system 100. The system has a sunroof panel 102 positioned next to another roof panel 104. The sunroof panel 102 is currently closed in that it is positioned atop an opening in the vehicle body. The sunroof panel can be opened by moving along parallel tracks 106 on each side of the panel 104.
The fact that the tracks are parallel puts design limitations on the vehicle body. For example, a distance 108 represents the spacing between the parallel tracks. This distance must necessarily be less than the narrowest width across the roof of the vehicle. Moreover, the opening that becomes accessible when the sunroof is opened (sometimes called the hands through opening) must be positioned between such tracks, and is therefore also constrained by the distance 108. In other words, with parallel tracks the design of the vehicle's roof has placed certain limitations on how large the sunroof opening can be made.
Some automobile manufacturers refer to the vehicle's dimensions using X-, Y- and Z-coordinates in a Cartesian coordinate system. For example, the X dimension is fore-aft in the vehicle, the Y dimension is left-right in the vehicle, and the Z dimension is up-down in the vehicle. Existing track mechanisms that are based on parallel tracks can then be characterized as allowing the panel track mechanism to travel at most in the X- and Z-dimensions, and not in the Y-dimension.